Someone tell the left about how hot space is....
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
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Can you elaborate? I get the gist of the problem but would love a technical breakdown.
Vacuum is an insulator and the solar panels get raw, unfiltered energy from the sun. Whereas on Earth, there's shit like an atmosphere that blunts the power of the sun's radiation, on top of air rapidly cooling panels and slowing chemical reactions down to whatever you're trying to power via conduction.
Yeah, the issue for spacecraft generally isn't that they cannot keep warm.
It's that they cannot dump the heat they are already generating.
For instance, look at the picture. Note the huge radiator arrays? Those had to be lifted in to orbit at horrendous cost. That wasn't done by accident - this is not a facility struggling to stay warm, far, far from it.
how would guns work in space? fire couple shots and wait for it to cool down? swappable heat sinks?
I suspect it depends on what the purpose of those weapons is:
Consider, for instance, some kind of high-orbit defence platform with regular resupply. That can afford relatively wasteful practices, although, even there, throwing heatsinks overboard and FOD'ing it's own orbital track seems unwise.
Perhaps they'd settle for a simpler option of using a water heatsink and just spraying the stuff overboard - or the sublimation system the Apollo spacesuits used.
Conversely, some kind of spaceship operating far from support might not want to dump it's water overboard every time it engages targets, so might prefer to maintain a stock of dedicated heatsinks or just run very large radiators to dump the heat without requiring any consumables at all.
Visually its kind of a neat idea, space warships ejecting maxxed out heatsinks like empty mags and swapping in cool ones.
Yeah, the thing - one of the things - the lefty meme fails to take into account is that, uhm, solar panels are made up of atoms, unlike (for the most part) space. Needless to say, a rather glaring oversight.
I really can't get into because I don't want to accidentally disclose classified information. Anything to do with spacecraft is classified left and right seemingly at random. There's a reason I don't work for the feds anymore.
That said I'll say this. Terrestrial solar systems don't work in the cold for entirely different reasons. Comparing them to this is like asking why a paper airplane doesn't work when it gets wet but a jumbo jet does.
Tell me about it! I worked with a company that ... lets say they made superior spanners. Like, really awesome, totally better than the best spanners. Wrenches for you yanks.
On two separate occasions the (Aussie) DOD turned up and asked: "Hey, can you build ROCKETS with those spanners?"
Company: "Well, yes you can. These awesome spanners can build the shit out of any rocket you like."
DOD: "So, we should declare that these spanners are of military significance! And as part of a ROCKETRY PROGRAM they should be on the RESTRICTED EXPORT LIST! In fact we should declare them CLASSIFIED!!!11!! eleven!"
At which point some frantic conversations took place to cause the DOD to step back from the edge. Such a declaration would absolutely destroy the spanner company. Even though spanners are basic tools that could be used to build literally anything at all.
Actual rocketry programs, satellites or any details pertaining to them are all of military value. You could strap a rocket motor, precision guidance and a heat shield to a simple bowling ball and have a precision inter-continental weapon with first strike capability. If your guidance is good enough, you can use it for single target assassination anywhere on earth.
I have, no fooling, seen the DoD attempt to classify a USB cable.
You could have just said "I don't really know what I'm talking about." That would have saved everyone involved precious time.
Just because it's an unproven claim doesn't mean it's automatically false, just mostly inconsequential.
And yeah people in aerospace really shouldn't be laying their cards on the table here just for dick measuring purposes, that'd be real dumb.
I've made a pretty nice life of not negligently spilling classified information, and I'm certainly not about to risk jail time to impress you guys.
Let alone a furfag's toady like him.
I didn't call it false because it was unproven. I called it false because it was false. He interjected himself into this thread by telling everyone he was a "subject matter expert", and that he definitely has sexual relationships with women. He conveniently "can't get into" details when asked to elaborate about the subject matter on which he is supposedly an expert. The excuse was that it might be "classified", an excuse I debunked. Information about a variety of these units is readily available. Even someone who isn't a supposed "subject matter expert" was able to explain the general workings and obstacles of energy attainment units in spacecraft. Our "expert" couldn't even give us a general overview. An attempt was then changed to move the goalposts. When that failed, Kaar apparently had a psychotic meltdown. There were deluded ramblings, juvenile rebuttals, and the use of alternate accounts to manipulate imaginary internet points. This is not a person of sound mind. He may believe he was part of an aerospace-adjacent organization, and had access to classified information, but the reality doesn't speak to that.
Personally I'd rather not go to jail just to impress internet randos.
Edit: it gets funnier, he got out wikipedia and is really mad that I didn't care to talk about something that was designed when I was a little kid.
Relevant
No, you'd personally rather lie to internet randos for clout. The workings of solar arrays used on space stations isn't classified. It took two minutes of searching to find information about the subject.
The only way to transfer heat through space is radiation. The sun emits radiation while the ISS does not, hence the ISS is going to build up excess heat. It's not cold, it's too warm. Sitting in the sunlight in space will roast you.
Yeah, if Karous had just said this, it would have avoided the tedious flame war above.
Another aspect is that, in the sun, those solar panels are exposed to extreme heat from sunlight and they are unable to cool.